Dan Snow's History Hit - A Short History of The World

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

How can you condense the history of the world into a book? Well-celebrated historian Simon Sebag Montefiore does just that in his new epic. He takes Dan on an exhilarating journey through the families that have shaped our world: the Caesars, Medicis and Incas, Ottomans and Mughals, and Bonapartes and Habsburgs to name a few. His new book 'The World' captures the story of humankind in all its joy, sorrow, romance, ingenuity and cruelty.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit, one of the most successful episodes ever of this podcast featuring Simon Sebag Montefiore telling me the whole history of Jerusalem. The settlement of that city stretching far back into prehistory, all the way up to its controversial present. Well now, Simon Sebag Montefiore, no doubt based on the success of that episode of the podcast, has gone one step further. based on the success of that episode, the podcast has gone one step further. From Jerusalem to the world, he sat down in lockdown here in the UK, started day one of lockdown, and wrote A History of the World. A gigantic tome, so heavy that I had to give chocolates and a nice bunch of flowers to my brilliant postal delivery person when he staggered to the front door holding it. Simon Sebag Montefiore joins me on this podcast

to talk about history of the world. Which bits of world history matter? Is it the bits we think? And who matters within that history? It's a big one. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Simon, welcome back on the podcast. Always great to be here. Lovely to see you, Dan. You've been a busy man.

I remember I came to your house to do a podcast about the letters from history. And then you were telling me, you took me into your holiest of holies. You said, I can't tell anyone about this, but look what I'm doing. And we opened the door and there on the floor were what, 300 books in neat piles. Yeah, not that neat, but here they are.

I think we can see some of them in the back there. But I'll tell you what. Yeah, you're right in the background. But it's so nice to be able to talk about it finally. I spent my lockdown doing lots of hoovering childcare and drinking ale pale ale out of a can whilst doing those two things you spent your lockdown writing a gigantic history of the world I mean that is just epic well I'm impressed you're a paragon of wholesome family life that's a much higher standard for all of us to follow. Did you only write a history of the world because of lockdown? Was this like, well, I'm locked down, I got to do this? Or was

this always in the works? I've always been thinking about doing it because I think the big challenge in history, as you know this very well, is that world history is wonderful. It has great trends and it spans the world and you have economic statistics that show you fascinating things. the world and you have economic statistics that show you fascinating things. And then biography, which we also love, is intimate and gritty and close. And I just wanted to combine the two so that you have the intimacy of biography, but the span of world history. That was the idea of the book. And then I had to think of a way to make it work, to think of a concept. And I came up with a very simple concept of doing what I call a family history. Yeah, tell everyone about that concept because it's quite fun. When I was writing my

Jerusalem book, I tried to think of a way to capture the way that history is more than just the fall of cities, a few battles, the reigns of kings, etc. But to get a feel of how a city worked, what people ate, the continuation of life the songs they sung the the way that there's continuity in all of our lives and to try and catch that in a history book and I decided the best way to do it was through families so in my history of Jerusalem I followed families and then my publisher said would that work for the whole world and I foolishly signed a deal with them and then of course panic started to set in as always does when you sign one of these things how I would do it and

then I suddenly thought actually family is the way because one of the great challenges is a sort of diversity to cover the whole world well family one of the things in this book I do is to treat Asian dynasties African dynast to treat Asian dynasties, African dynasties, South American dynasties, exactly as I would treat the Habsburgs or the Stuarts or the Tudors. And then another part of it is gender. You know, you want the history of women, that women are present in. And of course, family, women are as important as men. And then of course, children who are ignored in all histories, really. And they also appear in family history. So this is a great way to capture all that and also capture the messiness

and hybridity of world history. And so I decided to write it and I started it on the first day of lockdown. When you're doing world history, and obviously we all have our own limitations as fallible humans, and we see ourselves have our own limitations as fallible humans, and we see ourselves and our present in the past and all of that stuff. But even with all that, did you come away with a sense that we are all quite similar? Or did you come away with a sense that some periods and some beliefs and some places, some geographies have presented us with very, very different ways of looking at the world, of surviving? Were you surprised by the kind of diversity? Or were these things, even when you're entering a period where you knew nothing

about, were you surprised that they felt kind of quite familiar to you? The same problems reoccurring, climate, food, war, ambition, are all too human qualities, but also are failings? Yeah, that's such a good question. I mean, that is the question of the book you've put your finger on there. The fascinating thing is, you know, you look at those famous, wonderful Fayum in Egypt, those tomb portraits from the first century, you know, you look at those faces, and they are literally faces that are exactly the same as the faces of people today. And again, you look at the portraits of people throughout history, and they look the same. So yes, I mean, first of all, people look the same. And secondly, we're all in a quest for stability in some way. And then after stability,

there are other criteria that we look for in our lives, justice, for example, salvation, and then, of course, practical things like food, shelter, family, how to protect your children, shelter, family, how to protect your children, these basic things which are universal. And so, yes, in one sense, throughout the history, you feel that everybody share immense number of things. And of course, in a family history, everyone shares the wish to protect their children, to raise their children, for their children to live longer and that sort of thing. But having said that, the fascinating thing I think about history, and all historians need to recognise that actually, we know very little about even people who live with us, or live next door to us or our friends. And actually, the kind of key to history is to admit how little we know about everybody, and how different people are. And you only have to look at, for example, the Christological controversies of Byzantium. Yeah, I mean, we all look at those, buddy. We're all very familiar with those. I mean, what are you talking about? Well, you only have to look at those to realise like, oh my god,

these people were willing to die for crazy tiny little minutiae about the theological nature of Christ. But then today, people are willing to glue themselves to a motorway about climate change. And in 50 years, people may regard them as great heroes or they may regard them as madmen. The point is that the orthodoxies of every era, the inside of people's minds, even very recently, 100 years ago,

are foreign places to us. And the historian's job is to try to get inside those heads and recognise that they're different. Have you discovered new passions? What worlds have been opened up to you? What should we be looking at? I mean, you're right, many worlds have been opened up to me. I mean, one of the things, you've really touched on something that is interesting, you're right, there's very little of the traditional sort of British history. I mean, there are very little Tudors in this book, for example. Thank God for that. Oh, no, I'm losing listeners. Yeah, we're losing listeners. There are quite a lot of Nazis, though. One of the strangest things that we're seeing in Britain

today, and I think this is kind of very relevant for the book, is a total parochial obsession with just Britain and the British Empire. And the funny thing is that that's not just an obsession of the sort of, of the right, but also the left. And that's part of it. I mean, I started this as just an expert on Russia and the Middle East and history. Those are my kind of, that I've spent my life really studying, plus all the usual stuff that we all have, you know, the British stuff. But what's been fascinating is just discovering entirely new worlds that are really difficult to master. And I'm not saying I have mastered them, but I've actually had the top professors that I could find in the world read and check all the bits that I wasn't an expert on. For example, China. China is incredibly hard

to write about, but absolutely fascinating. So I was very lucky that the Chinese bits have been read by the Harvard professor of Chinese history and various kind of amazing kind of luminaries from America. So China is fascinating. But then there were really fascinating things like the book covers places that aren't normally coming. It doesn't have to be just America and Spanish Empire and Chinese Empire. There's also Cambodia, Hawaii, Haiti. I mean, Haiti, there's a fascinating subject that I've studied quite closely in this book. For example, there were two emperors of Haiti, Emperor Jacques and Emperor Fustat. There was a king of Haiti, King Henri Christophe, King Henri of Haiti, who's just a fascinating character, who had a royal court with all bells and whistles in the early 19th century.

Fascinating, rather brilliant character. So that's a place that's fascinating. And Albania, the rebellion of Skanderbeg against the Ottomans or the dictatorship of Enver Hodja, they are featured in the book. So what I've tried to do is have all sorts of things that no one really knows about. I'm not saying I knew about them either. I've studied them desperately. It's been a sort of nightmarish process trying to master these things. And you know what it's like, Dan, when one's doing a new TV programme or a new book, you desperately study in a kind of frenzy to try and master, to try and get good enough

to cover it or write it or whatever. And that's what I've done in this book. So it's full of kind of bizarre things. But if you're asking which is my favourite, I mean, my favourite time to be alive, and I think that we both have enjoyed it enormously, would be the height of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad in, you know, sort of 750 to 900. I think that was one of the sort of high points of culture, literature, civilization. And you've got the Tang Dynasty in China, sort of contemporary. So it makes you think about going backwards and forwards and the sort of progression, the arc of history. Speaking of the arc of history, did you come away with any sense of a journey that we're all on? We are on a journey.

There used to be the great tendency to sort of, you know, at the height of the American unipolar world, to believe that famous quotation, which I quote in the book, that, you know, the arc of history is essentially progressive and moves towards progress. And now with the rise of the dictatorships, the book goes right up to the invasion. It ends on the day of the invasion of Ukraine, by the way. So it's very up to date. It's got all about Putin and Zelensky. And Ukraine is a theme of it. The theme, Russian history, Ukrainian history, travel right through the book. But anyway, everyone used to feel that there was this kind of great art moving towards progress. And now everyone doubts that. But actually, the figures are still astonishing. The improvement of human life in the last

hundred years is so dramatic, more dramatic than anything in the whole of human history, in the many tens of thousands of years that they're covered in this book. You know, the last hundred years have brought such improvements. And it is interesting that all the causes of death that we now suffer from, cancer, Alzheimer's, I mean, many of them are actually the result of overeating. So that sort of says something about the state of human progress in terms of material well-being. You know, we may have gone too far. So we are still way ahead in terms of progress than the rest of history. But, I mean, we are seeing a real crisis in the democracies.

We're seeing a real crisis of autocracy. This isn't necessarily something I welcome there. It does fit well into my history. You know, we're seeing a massive return across the world of family regimes now, which is really interesting. And it shows that the modern state, the sort of presidential state with elections and so on, is failing a lot of people around the world. And they're turning. I mean, you only have to look at Philippines just elected the son of Marcos, for example. You know, President Kenyatta's son has only just left power in Kenya. All over

the world, there are what I call demo dynasties, elected people who are parts of families like the Bushes in America, the Gandhi-Niru family in India. But in Pakistan, for example, you know, the present government is an entirely dynastic government. There's a Bhutto as foreign minister, there's a Sharif as prime minister. So family power, we're reverting to that in a big way. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking about the whole history of the world. More coming up, hopefully. Aeroplanes, spacesuits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships. Over on the patented podcast by History Hit, we bring you the fascinating stories of history's most impactful inventions

and the people who claim these ideas as their own. We uncover exceptional stories behind everyday objects. We managed to put two men on the moon before we put wheels on suitcases. Unpack invention myths. So the prince's widow immediately becomes certain. Thomas Edison stole her husband's invention and her husband disappeared around the same time. Can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison, who at the time is arguably the most famous person in the West. And look backwards to understand technologies that are still in progress. You know, when people turn around to me and say, oh, why would you want to live forever?

Life's rubbish. I just think that's a bit sad. I think it's a worthwhile thing to do. And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. Thank you. Simon, I would love you to tell me a couple of moments from history that you've identified that matter in a kind of world historic sense. Take me through some of them.

I mean, because it must be difficult when you're going through and you're looking at all these families and rebellions and wars and breakthroughs. through and you're looking at these families and rebellions and wars and breakthroughs some of them sort of matter regionally and nationally for a while but some must go on to matter and continue to shape the world today give me some examples i mean there are so many examples but i mean obviously one of the things that fascinate me that really involve all of us are all the medical moments um and there are quite a lot of them. Koch's discovery of bacteria, for example, and the whole of sort of the late 19th century developments of medicine, which there are many, they are all absolutely fascinating. Do doctors matter more than generals? Doctors do matter more than generals for the average person. talking about that. It's just fascinating that until sort of late in the 19th century, people who couldn't afford doctors were more likely to survive encounters with diseases than people who could. So one of the fascinating statistics is that oftentimes aristocrats,

when they got ill and they called in doctors, were much more likely to die than peasants in a hovel somewhere, because doctors killed many more people than they saved. And there are fascinating things. I mean, for example, Galen, the great sort of Roman, the doctor of Marcus Aurelius, who dealt with the Marcus Aurelius plague, he's always regarded as a great sort of pioneering doctor. In fact, his system of humours, which was followed for over 1000 years, was completely wrong on every detail. And, you know, repeatedly in the book, you have these moments where doctors basically killed their patients. But there were a few amazing doctors who achieved extraordinary things.

For example, the doctor of Henry V, when Henry V was young, you know, when he got that arrow through the face and out the back of his neck, You know, when he got that arrow through the face and out the back of his neck, and the doctor invented a sort of screw that gripped it and pulled it through back through his head. I mean, the chances of him surviving that were very small, but he survived extraordinarily. In the time of Philip II, there's Dr. Vesalius, who was his sort of court doctor. And when his son, the crazy Don Carlos, fell down the stairs chasing a maid who he wanted to flagellate, he opened his skull to let off the pus and reduce the pressure, and the boy survived. So that was a sort of early case of almost kind of brain surgery in the 16th century. So doctors are very important.

And then, of course, in modern times, there are discoveries of the computers. And I'm fascinated to look into that and the way that's changed the world. I mean, I think one thing that's really fascinating is the development of drones in warfare, the ability to assassinate people using drones. And now, of course, we see in the Ukrainian war, we really are in the drone age. Those are technological developments. But of course, yes, there are lots of generals and battles. People know all the famous ones, but people have forgotten, for example, Marshal Pilsudski's defeat of the Bolsheviks outside Warsaw in 1920, for example. That was

a decisive battle. But to individuals kind of matter. And I always think Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, he probably matters quite a lot, right? But what's fascinating about China is this is what, I think as historians, you know, the challenge is to cut through orthodoxies that have come to be kind of believed and to look at them and say, is this true? I mean, for example, the People's Republic of China now have projected in our lifetimes the idea that there's always been a great Chinese empire, that there's been a great world power. And actually, that simply isn't true. The Chinese empire now is stronger than it's ever been, but it's unique. This projection of world power that President Xi is projecting now is actually

unique in world history. When there were times, yes, the first emperor of Qin, for example, I mean, there were times, yes, the first emperor of Qin, for example, united a Chinese state for the first time. But that was very small. If you look at it, it was much smaller. The Han dynasty was at the same time as a Roman empire and they were in contact. That's fascinating. Though, again, it was much smaller than what came later. Then the Tang, they expanded fascinatingly into Central Asia. And so that was an example of a sort of massive Chinese empire that we would understand today as a mega state. But it was 200 years, you know.

And then again, between each of these great flowerings of Chinese empire, there was chaos with kind of massive civil wars, multiple kingdoms. And then, of course, the last dynasty, the Manchus, the Qing, they expanded into Central Asia, and they were the biggest Chinese empire in history before the People's Republic, as it were. And at times, they expanded right into Central Asia, as the Tang had too. But actually, throughout much of history, China wasn't a massive kind of empire, wasn't half as powerful as the People's Republic would like us to believe now. What they've done is actually new. And it was only under the Ming when they sent those voyages under Zheng He into the Mediterranean all the way to Africa. That was a very rare moment when China expanded outside East Asia

and reached Africa and the Middle East. That was a very short interlude for one reign. And after that, China again went back into its motherland. And the fact is, what President Xi is doing with his initiative, his global initiative at the moment, is actually unique. doing with his initiative, his global initiative at the moment, is actually unique. What about women? They are very prominent in the book. Are we seeing more women in the past now because we are lifting the lens of misogyny away from our eyes? Are we seeing them, the thinkers, the scholars, the politicians, wielding hard and soft power? Or are we having to, as a result of institutional misogyny, are you having to go and find those women and explore how they might have had an influence? I mean, what do you feel after writing this book?

One of the things I'd say is that this book is really a celebration. And I think it's a celebration of what we might call the new history, you know, which is much more diversity, treating Africa and Asia as easily as important as Europe. And that always was the way I always approached history. And so I sort of celebrate those developments of the new sort of spirit of history of diversity is brilliant. And that includes women. And I celebrate female history. And I haven't had to desperately look for women to include in this book at all. I mean, my first history book was Catherine the Great and Potemkin. So I've always loved writing about female history. And this book is filled with fascinating and amazing women. But again, until recently, one often saw female historians and intellectuals arguing that if only there'd been more female leaders, the world would

be a much better place. And of course, in our own time, you know, when you look at the sort of prime minister of Finland, for example, one does lean towards that view. But actually, probably the lesson of my world history is that women are no better and no worse than male leaders. I mean, in some cases, Empress Wu of China, for example, during the Tang Dynasty, they are much worse than male rulers. Most of the time, they're no better and no worse. But they are fascinating. And one of the great things about family history is, of course, women are as prominent as men. And in dynasties, that's the fascinating thing. And many times, as the mothers of rulers, the widows of rulers, they become incredibly powerful. And what's

fascinating is some of them are actually enslaved women too. They started as slaves, sold to a sultan or an emperor's harem or sold to them as booty in war. And then they blossom and they become in themselves massive world rulers. So you're saying you were able to find women wielding power. It's a case that traditional scholars have overlooked the role that women have played rather than women have just been excluded and therefore less accessible to historians. I think so. I think they've just been left out. You know, with many of the arguments that we see, again, in the culture wars, people say it's just a scandal that history, this isn't taught in school. Well, actually, very little is taught in school. I mean,

that's the point. Virtually nothing is taught in school, as we know. History is a very small subject in schools. And yes, I mean, a lot of these characters should be taught more. And if I had a rule from this book, it would be that people should just learn less of their own history in schools and more of other people's. But take an example like the Velida Sultan Kosen, for example, of the Ottoman Empire, who has really dominated the Ottoman Empire at the same time as James I and Charles I. And she was an enslaved woman taken to Istanbul, sold to the Harem. She's very beautiful, but she's also extremely clever and powerful and intelligent. And she marries the sultan. And then she basically dominates the Ottoman Empire for sort of 30 or 40 years.

Now, most people haven't heard her name. She's one of the great characters in the book. And she also has to make some terrible decisions, by the way. She has to order the strangling of her own son at one point. And in the end, her own grandson has her hunted down and strangled herself. So it's a very, very tough world. But for a long time, she is probably the most powerful woman in the world. And yet we've never heard of her.

But we should have. And there are many others. others Sorkuk Tani and the Mongol Empire the Mongols are a huge part of this book and again for sort of 10 or 20 years she's literally the most powerful woman in the world and a fascinating character clearly kind of incredibly able and brilliant and the mother of a series of great Khans as well, and a Christian, bizarrely, an historian Christian. So these are some of the women that I've tried to bring out in the book, and their stories are just as fascinating as Louis XIV or the characters that we're familiar with. Do you feel positive about this human journey at the end of this book? How are you feeling, Simon? Yeah, I'll tell you what, I mean, writing this book was a sort of hellish

trauma in itself. I mean, without lockdown, I probably wouldn't have ever been able to write it. And it really tested me, of course, it was daunting, but also very satisfying. When I wrote the conclusion, the conclusion looks ahead into the 21st century. And there are many troubling, terrible things ahead. I mean, of course, climate change, but also, of course, the challenge of how to handle tech, how to handle the new digital world, both as individuals and institutionally and politically, which is one of the great challenges that we have to face. And then, of course, you know, relevantly now, you know, the threat of nuclear war and the use of nuclear weapons.

And then there's called the massive population increases in countries like Nigeria and Egypt that will be very challenging as well. But when I come to the end of it and I look back, the great thing about world history is the perspective it gives you. And that's one of the things that this book does offer. I look back at it and I felt like actually, is family, the basic unit of human existence. Even though there are so many things that we should be afraid of. And one of the features,

by the way, that go through all human life is the belief that the world is about to come to an end. In every era, there's a feeling of a coming apocalypse. But that's one of the things that I found most encouraging. I do believe, and I do finish the book with a feeling of positivity, despite everything. Simon, let's disobey your earlier dictum and say that we should only study stories that are not our own. Talk to me about Britain. What role did Britain play in this book? Is it largely a kind of technological industrial story from the 18th century? I really cover Britain when Britain really counts, and also aspects of Britain that are less familiar. But you know, of course, in the 18th century, Britain becomes, you know, massive world power. And that's thanks primarily to a synchronicity

of resources, enterprise. And so the British Empire is incredibly important. Like all empires, all empires really start with an act of violence. That's how they conquer their territories, you know, mixed with, normally in an ad hoc fashion, though some empires are created with a sort of a single conqueror, a single idea, like, for example, the Arab Empire. But Britain's really important, 18th and 19th century. We cover the empire in great detail, along with all the other empires, and also the great statesmen of the 19th century. So, you know, the British Empire, the African Empire was really very short-lived, for example. You know, it was really created in the 1880s. It ended in 1960, basically.

So some parts of the empire are a lot shorter than others. And there were really many British empires. There was the American Empire, partly lost, the African Empire, obviously India. All of these things are in here, and all of them are important and are covered. Simon, what do you do after writing History of the World? What's your plan there, buddy? This has been translated into many languages now. I mean, I'm starting this year just with Holland, but then it's appearing in America, in all sorts of countries, in India. It's going to be published in China. It's being published all over the world.

So I'm going to go on a sort of world tour to match the book. And it's been a sort of crazy rollercoaster writing this. So I would say I'm in world recovery, really. Brilliant. Well, thank you very much for writing it. From our point of view, we're very glad you did go through that. What is the book called? It's called The World Family History.

I'm just so relieved that it's out. I'm really excited for it and hope your listeners enjoy. Well, Simon Sebag Montefiore, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you.